09/25/2003 - Updated 09:09 AM ET
New 'cities' springing up around many U.S. airports
By Haya El Nasser, USA TODAY
DENVER — When thunderstorms roll in, gusty winds whip through wheat fields
and farm pastures that stretch as far as the eye can see. For years, Denver
residents wrote off these deserted plains northeast of the city as a no-man's land
that might as well be in Kansas. Denver's explosive suburban growth veered in
the opposite direction.
Then, in 1995, came the new airport. Its billowing fiberglass roof, inspired by the
snowy peaks of the Rocky Mountains in the background, now rises from the vast
expanse. Hundreds of cars zoom past new homes, hotels, gas stations, office
parks, warehouses and distribution centers.
A city has been born.
Airports are such vital centers of growth and development that they've become
as important to a region as a city's central business district. After decades of
haphazard development around old airports, new airports such as Denver
International (DIA) and privately owned Alliance Airport in Fort Worth are being
built with the goal of creating more than an airport.
The vision is an "aerotropolis," a term coined by John Kasarda, director of the
Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise at the University of North Carolina-Chapel
Hill.
"Airports will shape business location and urban development in this century as
much as highways did in the 20th, railroads in the 19th and seaports did in the
18th centuries," Kasarda says. "The three 'A's' — accessibility, accessibility,
accessibility — will replace the three 'L's' — location, location, location."
Today, commercial and residential centers radiate from airport terminals and
runways. Companies, increasingly reliant on air transportation to move people
and goods quickly in a global economy, locate nearby. About 54% of U.S.
exports move by air, up from 42% in 1990. High-tech companies have a 50%
higher demand for air transportation than smokestack industries. When
thousands of jobs are created, new homes follow.
Airports are becoming like downtowns, and terminal concourses their Main
Streets where people shop, eat and work. They're influencing society and culture
the same way that cities have.
Airports are temporary homes and offices for thousands of travelers every day
and permanent workplaces for countless others. Chicago O'Hare, for example,
employs more than 50,000 people, enough to populate a small city. Business
people come from around the world to conference centers at or near the airport.
Airports are recreating the atmosphere of downtowns by opening shopping malls,
food courts and conference centers — even art galleries. Rotating exhibits hang
at airports in Denver and San Francisco. The Smithsonian Institution's National
Air and Space Museum soon will open a museum at Dulles International Airport
outside Washington, D.C.
Shopping at airports is becoming more competitive with shopping at regional
malls and downtowns. BAA USA, a subsidiary of the British company that owns
and operates airports in London, developed the Air Mall concept of "street
pricing" at Pittsburgh's airport — prices no higher than in comparable stores in
the surrounding area.
The move is designed to dispel the price-gouging image that airport shops have
earned over the years. The Pittsburgh airport also has stores that aren't in local
malls — Timberland, the outdoor apparel retailer, for one.
Tighter security since 9/11 means more time to shop for travelers who must be at
the airport two hours before their flights. Air Malls now are in three terminals at
Boston's Logan International.
Airports are adopting the feel of towns in other ways. Dallas-Fort Worth
International Airport has a winery and tasting room (American Airlines Terminal
A). Airports in Charlotte, Nashville, Wilmington, Del., and Boston provide rocking
chairs. In Austin, travelers can enjoy live music.
"I wouldn't say that an airport is a city," says sociologist Mark Gottdiener, author
of Life in the Air: Surviving the New Culture of Air Travel. "But airports have taken
over some of the important functions of historic downtowns as new urban
centers."
Cities were built over centuries, usually at the crossroads of trade routes — first,
where trails intersected, then at railroad junctions or lakes and seaports and,
later, near highways. For a city like Denver, 1,000 miles from the sea, the airport
is its port to the world.
But most major U.S. airports were built decades ago, and few people then could
grasp their ultimate influence on modern life — air travel affordable to the
masses, e-commerce, global shipment of goods from computer parts and
overnight mail to fresh seafood and fresh-cut flowers. Growth around airports
wasn't planned — it mushroomed wherever space could be found.
Today, older airports such as O'Hare are running out of space. Feuds with
neighbors living under flight paths and near runways are getting noisier. Chicago
is talking about building another airport south of the city in Peotone, Ill.
"If cities are going to compete in an economy increasingly based on speed, agility,
long-distance connectivity, airports are essential," Kasarda says.
Igniting urban growth
Planners always have embraced airports as magnets for development. Now, they
see airports as a major center of urban growth.
Several airports are driving the discussion. Among them are Denver — the first
major one built in the USA in 25 years — and older airports far enough outside
cities that there's room to grow:
• Washington Dulles International Airport was dubbed a white elephant by many
local residents when it opened in a then-remote suburb of the capital in 1962. But
federal aviation officials knew that the region would need another airport to
accommodate new passenger jets. Washington National had narrow runways
and no room to grow because it's close to the city and the Potomac River.
Planners settled on Virginia's Loudoun County, 30 miles from downtown.
It wasn't until a toll road linking Dulles and Washington opened 20 years later that
development began along the airport corridor. Dulles helped make Loudoun the
nation's fastest-growing county in the 1990s. AOL's headquarters are there. Leo
Schefer, president of the Washington Airports Task Force, a non-profit group
that's pushing for mass transit to Dulles, estimates that 68% of the 1 million jobs
created in the Washington region in the past 20 years are in areas with easy
access to Dulles.
• Fort Worth Alliance Airport opened in 1989 on land owned by the Ross Perot
family. Ross Perot Jr., son of the Texas billionaire and two-time presidential
candidate, set aside 9,600 acres for the airport and a business park. Bell
Helicopters, Federal Express and luxury jetmaker Gulfstream built major facilities
there. Now, 20,000 people work for 100 companies that have distribution and
manufacturing centers near the airport.
Another 2,800 acres are being developed into a corporate campus, golf course,
luxury single-family homes, an upscale shopping center and health care services.
A 2,300-acre subdivision will feature homes priced from $140,000 to $300,000. It
appeals largely to people who work at or near the airport less than 3 miles away.
• Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport has unleashed massive development
around it. Las Colinas is the biggest. A 12,000-acre community that's larger than
most downtowns and is geared to businesses and residents needing quick
airport access, Las Colinas has 27 million square feet of office space, 8.5 million
square feet of light industrial, 1.3 million square feet of retail, hotels, restaurants,
and 13,300 single- and multi-family homes. Its commercial space and population
of 25,000 rival downtown Dallas. "This is an airport city," Kasarda says.
• Albuquerque International Sunport is spurring one of the largest developments
in the world near an airport. Mesa del Sol will be a mixed-used development with
light-rail connections on more than 12,000 acres.
• Detroit is hoping the Pinnacle Aeropark, a 19 million-square-foot office,
technology and retail development near Detroit Metro Airport, will give the
industrial city a more polished 21st-century image.
When then-Mayor Federico Peña pushed to build a new airport in Denver, critics
accused him of pandering to business and land speculators. Many Denver
residents found Stapleton Airport convenient because it was close to downtown.
Its proximity was the problem, however. Built in the 1920s, Stapleton was
surrounded by residential and commercial development and had no room to
expand. The runways were so close together that the airport frequently shut
down in bad weather. Nearby residents fed up with jet noise sued to force
Stapleton to close.
Spreading out in Denver
It was clear that a new airport would entail much more than runways and a
terminal. It had to have enough room to add runways when business grew and
enough land around it to accommodate industrial cargo facilities, commercial and
residential space. It had to be far enough from subdivisions to avoid debates over
noise.
"We needed the wide-open West," says developer Cal Fulenwider III, whose
family owned huge tracts northeast of Denver.
The city settled on 34,500 acres of farmland — 20% owned by Fulenwider.
Voters in Denver and Adams counties approved the city's annexation of the land
and closing Stapleton. A toll road was built to link the airport with Interstate 70
and the rest of the metro area. Water and sewer lines for the airport opened the
surrounding land to development.
"When we first took the airport out there, people thought we were out of our
minds," former councilwoman Happy Haynes says.
"No one understood the impact and significance of it," says Ron Bernstein,
economic development director under Mayor Wellington Webb, Peña's successor.
"In 1995, most of the discussion about DIA was when it would go bankrupt."
Now, 25% of the Denver metro area's growth is near the airport. Brighton, a 116year-old railroad town north of the airport, issued no more than a dozen building
permits in 1994, the year before the airport opened. Now, it's up to 1,000 a year,
Mayor Jan Pawlowski says. "Without the airport, we wouldn't have seen it."
City planners admit they were slow to push for development along the 15-mile
corridor between the airport and the heart of Denver. They were more focused on
massive parcels of land suddenly available closer to downtown: 4,700 acres at
the old airport site and another 2,100 acres freed up when an Air Force base and
an Army hospital closed. Now, the goal is to link all these developments with DIA.
An economic study projects that in 2025, $85 billion will be spent annually within
the 300 square miles surrounding DIA, up 466% from 2002. Jobs are projected to
double to 400,000 and population to grow 66% to a half-million.
"People are building something that's equivalent to an entire new city," says Julie
Bender, president and CEO of the DIA Partnership, a group that promotes
development around the airport.
South of the airport, developers can barely keep up with the demand for new
homes. Oakwood Homes has built 5,000 moderately priced homes and starts
construction on three more every day. All are sold before groundbreaking,
President Bob Sanderman says. Half of all new single-family homes built in
Denver in 2002 are in the area. Oakwood plans to build 13,000 more.
The new airport has made Denver a bigger player on the national stage. "I don't
hear as many 'cow-town' laments (about Denver)," says historian Patricia
Limerick, faculty director of the Center of the American West at the University of
Colorado.
But Limerick still misses her 30-minute ride to Stapleton airport. It takes her an
hour to get to DIA.